Uber Failed To Protect Female Riders in Pakistan, Whats Next?

Another girl suffers mistreatment by Uber driver in Pakistan

It’s been a while now since the transportation system in the Country got revolutionized, and the people finally genuinely felt calm after having a hassle-free and economical journey by using services like Uber.

By and large, it has been full of admiration from the people as they hire taxi services while sitting at their homes or offices just by using online applications. However as it is widely believed nothing comes to you quite often with ease, you have to pay for it.

The same perception has quite regularly been observed in “Careem” and “Uber”, two prominent app based ride-hailing taxi services, which are operating across the Country for a couple of years.

Soon after they marked their presence, the conventional taxi services suffered immensely but as the time passed on, the common people also began to lodge complaints about the behaviors of their drivers or services etc.

Now another incident of similar nature occurred on August 30 when an “Uber” driver mistreated a girl, triggering an infuriated response her and her brother.

Her brother namely Hamid Sarfraz took to Facebook and narrated the whole incident having taken place with his sister. Hamid Sarfraz also sought an official apology from “Uber” within 30 days and warned of suing the service if his demand wasn’t met.

The victimized girl also demanded that penalty be served to the driver for his inappropriate actions.

It is pertinent to mention here that earlier in November last year, an FIR was also lodged at I-9 Police Station in Islamabad against an “Uber” driver Muhammad Ayub for molesting a woman.

“Uber” was the first ride hailing service in Pakistan to introduce an anti harassment training for their drivers in order to safeguard their female passengers.

Earlier as per reports, “Careem” and “Uber” in their different press releases said that most of their customers are female aged between 22-35. However, in recent times a lot of reports of harassment were reported on social media which makes us wonder that how effective the driver onboarding process is.

Amid the current scenario, a giant ride-hailing company like “Uber” should bring transparency in their procedures and make this information public since the general public is being directly affected by the negligence of those who are supposed to maintain the quality and security of the procedures and the company.